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On March 6, 2025, Starship’s eighth flight test successfully lifted off at 5:30 p.m. CT from Starbase in Texas. All 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster started up successfully and completed a full duration burn during ascent. After powering down all but the three center engines on Super Heavy, Starship ignited all six of its Raptor engines to separate in a hot-staging maneuver and continue its ascent to space.
The Super Heavy booster then relit 11 of 13 planned Raptor engines and performed a boostback burn to return itself to the launch site. Once there, it relit 12 of the planned 13 engines for its landing burn, including one of the engines that did not start up for the boostback burn. The three center engines continued running to maneuver the booster to the launch and catch tower arms, resulting in the third successful catch of a Super Heavy booster.
The most probable cause for engines not relighting during the boostback and landing burn phases was traced to torch ignition issues on the individual engines caused by thermal conditions local to the igniter. Post-flight testing was able to replicate the issue and engines on future flights will have additional insulation as mitigation.
Starship’s upper stage flew along its expected trajectory following separation from the Super Heavy booster. Approximately five and a half minutes into its ascent burn, a flash was observed in the aft section of the vehicle near one of the center Raptor sea level engines followed by an energetic event that resulted in the loss of the engine. Immediately after, the remaining two center Raptor engines and one of the Raptor vacuum engines shut down and vehicle control authority was lost. Telemetry from the vehicle was last received approximately nine and a half minutes into the flight, or a little more than two minutes following the first flash observation, at which point all engines had shut down.
Contact with Starship was lost prior to triggering any destruct rules for its Autonomous Flight Safety System, which was fully healthy when communication was lost. It is expected that the Autonomous Flight Safety System fired upon loss of communication, ensuring vehicle breakup following the mishap. The vehicle was observed to re-enter the atmosphere and break apart following the loss of communication.
Starship flew within a designated launch corridor to safeguard the public both on the ground, on water, and in the air. Following the mishap, SpaceX teams immediately began coordination with the FAA, ATO (air traffic control) and other safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses. SpaceX worked closely with the Bahamian government and sent a team of experts to coordinate and execute clean-up efforts. All debris came down within the pre-planned Debris Response Area, and there were no hazardous materials present in the debris and no significant impacts expected to occur to marine species or water quality.
SpaceX led the investigation efforts with oversight from the FAA and participation from NASA, the National Transportation and Safety Board, and the United States Space Force. SpaceX submitted a mishap report to the FAA for review and received a flight safety determination from the FAA to enable its next flight of Starship.
The most probable root cause for the loss of Starship was identified as a hardware failure in one of the upper stage’s center Raptor engines that resulted in inadvertent propellant mixing and ignition. Extensive ground testing has taken place since the flight test to better understand the failure, including more than 100 long-duration Raptor firings at SpaceX’s McGregor test facility.
To address the issue on upcoming flights, engines on the Starship’s upper stage will receive additional preload on key joints, a new nitrogen purge system, and improvements to the propellant drain system. Future upgrades to Starship will introduce the Raptor 3 engine which will include additional reliability improvements to address the failure mechanism.
While the failure manifested at a similar point in the flight timeline as Starship’s seventh flight test, it is worth noting that the failures are distinctly different. The mitigations put in place after Starship’s seventh flight test to address harmonic response and flammability of the ship’s attic section worked as designed prior to the failure on Flight 8.
Starship is designed to fundamentally change and enhance humanity’s ability to reach space. This step change in capability won’t happen overnight and progress towards that goal won’t always come in leaps. But by putting hardware into a real-world environment as frequently as possible, while still maximizing controls for public safety, progress can be made to achieve the goal of flying a reliable, fully and rapidly reusable rocket.